Let's Compare: CMC Episodes

Like Rallinale's blogs, just rank these episodes in order from best to worst. Which CMC episode is the best and which leaves something to be desired? Note: I am not counting The Cutie Mark Chronicles as despite being about the CMC, it was mostly flashbacks to the mane six's backstory.

The episodes are: Call of the Cutie, Stare Master, The Show Stoppers, Sisterhooves Social, The Cutie Pox, Family Appreciation Day, Hearts and Hooves Day, Ponyville Confidential, One Bad Apple, Sleepless in Ponyville, Flight to the Finish, Twilight Time, Somepony to watch over me, For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils, Bloom and Gloom, Appleloosa's Most Wanted, Brotherhooves Social, and Crusaders of the Lost Mark.

Just rank the episodes in any order based on how much you enjoyed them or which ones were your favourites.

1. Flight to the Finish: I was expecting this episode to suck. Really badly. I was expecting it to be a bad rehash of May the Best Pet Win meets Ponyville Confidential with Scootaloo being horrendously mocked by Rainbow Dash (I really did think that would happen), Diamond Tiara, and even ostracized by her friends. However, when this episode came out, I got much more than I expected, having plenty of funny moments to offset the very serious topic of disability. While some of the writers have said Scootaloo does not have a disability, this episode treats her like she does. And like Sleepless before it, it has Rainbow Dash being nice to Scootaloo, which pretty much eliminates the idea of her being a bad sister/bad influence. This isn't just my favourite episode of S4, but my favourite episode of all time for being brave enough to tackle a subject like disability and not have the entire episode be nothing but heckling or ponies being jerks like a certain Captain Planet episode.

2. Crusaders of the Lost Mark: I said I liked For whom the Sweetie Belle Toils, Brotherhooves, Flight, and Sleepless more, but this episode pretty much was the perfect Cutie Mark Crusaders episode. It was very similar to Pinkie Pride in that it was almost entirely a musical, and while I'm usually not a fan of musicals, this episode took risks and I give it credit for that. While I don't really care for the Crusaders new marks (they all look the same with minute differences, and their special talents have obviously been changed from what we saw in Showstoppers, which kind of makes that episode and the CMC' s apparent obliviousness more understandable.) this episode hit all the right points and felt like Flight to the Finish all over again. They managed to get Diamond Tiara out of scrappy territory for me and replace her with her mother (so that's why she's so mean!) and the songs were really good. I have to say, Michelle, Claire, and Madeline are really good singers, though if you've seen One Bad Apple, you know that already. The only reason it didn't beat out Flight was because Flight was a Very special episode about disability and did the whole emotional turmoil thing just a little bit better.

3. Sleepless In Ponyville: This episode was my favourite CMC episode before Flight to the Finish. It started out as a typical Scootaloo fangirling over Rainbow Dash episode, much like Mare Do Well, which I wasn't too impressed with. However, it was when they started on the camping trip that this episode really started getting good. I adored the interactions between the CMC and their sister figures, and it was cute seeing Scootaloo get all scared and sad when she didn't have a sister to cuddle up to. There was also a lot of humour in this episode involving Scootaloo's scary story (I think that may be the scariest story I've ever heard) as well as the Oats on the Wall song. But ultimately, what really sealed this episode was the ending where Rainbow Dash scolded Scootaloo and took her under her wing.